Ready for a data growth
Ready for a data growth Written by John O’Hanlon Produced by Danielle Harris
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Telefónica Deutschland, having outsourced its day to day network management, is taking steps to outstrip its rivals through proactive customer service. The company will know if there’s a problem, and will come up with a fix or an explanation before the network user even knows about it
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ince it entered the German market in 2005 with the acquisition of the O2, Telefónica has become one of the three leading integrated telecommunications providers in Germany. In the mobile segment alone, Telefónica Deutschland is the market leader. In 2014 Telefónica Deutschland acquired E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH. Now the company is working on a simplified management structure across Telefónica Deutschland’s entire mobile access, core and fixed network operations. Quality monitoring and surveillance this extensive network has been the responsibility of Marcus Thurand, VP of Network Operations since 2013, but his job has evolved almost out of recognition. The networks not only have to be reliable; they have to be smart enough to cope with a new era of communications. As the CEO Markus Haas pointed out in March at CeBIT,
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Marcus Thurand VP of Network Operations
building a better connected world Huawei Technologies is one of the world’s leading providers of information technology and telecommunication solutions. More than a third of the world’s population and more than half of the German population use Huawei technology directly or indirectly. Headquartered in Shenzhen, China, the company has 180,000 employees and operates in 170 countries with its three business units, Carrier Network, Enterprise Business and Consumer Business. Huawei employs 79,000 people in research and development, and operates 16 research and development clusters worldwide, as well as 28 partnerships with partners. Huawei has been operating in Germany since 2001 and employs over 2000 people at 18 locations. The headquarters of the European Research Center of Huawei is located in Munich.
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Hannover: “Due to the continuous progress of network technology, I have unlimited possibilities of using digital means to make life easier. Regarding the internet of things, we will see an enormous growth in connecting devices via Narrowband IoT. For instance electricity and water meters. Also with applications for consumer the internet of things will open entirely new dimensions in core areas such as mobility and health. This can only be beneficial for all of us.
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In order to meet all the increasing requirements the network has to be very resilient. Thurand and his team look after the 24-hour surveillance of the entire network, as well as configuration and integration and all new hardware and software affecting it, and providing network support to large business customers. His department’s emphasis has radically shifted with the setting up of a new Service Operations Centre. The company brought in Accenture to help define the shape of the
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innovative network organisation and the process of transitioning from the former model to the new SOC organisation. Launched on April 16 2017, the Munich-based centre has its own premises and staff. Its very existence shows how significant both perspectives are. The customer engagement is as much important as the inwardlooking network management, he says. “These days we’re looking at the network not only from a technical point of view but stronger
from the user experience by trying to understand what the customers are really doing with our services.” The Service Operations Centre uses custom built software. The system technology is mainly made available by long-time Telefónica partner Huawei. “Using this software we are able to look into the customer experience from interactions on the network and assess whether it was good or not,” says Thurand. We all know that checking out a YouTube clip, for example, can be a
“These days we’re looking at the network not so much from a technical point of view as trying to understand what the customers are really doing with our services”
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Munich The regional HQ of Telefónica Germany
very different experience. Sometimes it’s perfect, sometimes it stalls or distorts. We are unlikely to know why, but now Telefónica can tell us. “We aggregate anonymous user experiences to see whether certain services in a certain region are behaving well or poorly and deduce whether we can do something about that and help the customer have a better experience,” Thurand explains. This is just a starting point. The next step is to use the information to interact with the customer. “Perhaps a customer had a bad experience from our data service for example, and wants to complain,” Thurand continues. “We can provide information up-front to customer service, tell them the performance in an application was not as it should be and there really was something at fault in the network. In that case we can work out with customer service any incentives we can give the customer in compensation. Going further we can be even more proactive because we already know about the issue. If the customer complains, we can tell them we’re
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“Using Huawei’s software we are able to look into the customer experience from interactions on the network and assess whether it was good or not”
Telefonica Puts Customers First Via Datameer “IP networks and services create major challenges to measuring the true customer experience. Datameer broke down the data and analytic barriers, letting us find insights faster to ensure we deliver the utmost experience and best services for our customers.” Marcus Thurand, VP Network Operations, Telefonica Germany
At Telefonica, creating a “customer first” atmosphere required a cultural change of fostering new ideas through data. This required a nimble analytics platform that could bridge customer and network data, and democratize that data across the company for rapid data discovery. Telefonica partnered with Datameer to create an analytics environment that broke down silos of information for
Results Improved customer experience based on data-driven insights
customer and operational insights. Through Datameer, Telefonica generates new ideas to continuously deliver better networks and services for their customers.
Over 20 use cases discovered and acted on
About Datameer Datameer’s big data analytics platform turns complex data into actionable insights through agile data preparation and analytics. Using Datameer, organizations like Telefonica deliver insights in hours instead of months and operationalize them rapidly, increasing business agility and market responsiveness.
Analytics That Drive Action www.datameer.com
Single view of customer and network data achieved
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aware the service was not good on run applications on systems with that occasion and suggest what thousands of commodity hardware we can do to make it better.” nodes, and to handle thousands of The new organisation shifts terabytes of data, means it can not Telefónica’s focus away from only manage the requirements of the purely technical, bringing Telefónica’s existing network but customers into the discussion potentially the exponential increase from the standpoint of what they that will result for the growth of IoT as are really doing foreseen by Mr Haas. with the network Currently Marcus and experiencing Thurand and his it. No out-ofteam are engaged in the-box software analysing anonymous could do what was customers’ activity needed, so over a such as browsing, 12 month period a file downloading new platform was and uploading and The year Telefónica developed with popular applications Germany was Huawei. It’s so much like WhatsApp founded more than a matter and YouTube. “We of simply trawling for started in April and information. A key part of the mix is we need to see what applications advanced analytics that will extract our customers are using, and trying more information from the big data. to bring new applications such The Huawei software is built around as mytaxi which are very German a Hadoop cluster, a framework market specific. The idea is to that supports the processing and measure whether the app is working storage of extremely large data well for customer groups, provide sets in a distributed computing feedback to these groups and offer environment. Hadoop’s ability to help if we detect a problem.”
2005
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Once the system has been trialled for a reasonable period, he would like to collaborate with the companies that make the apps people access on the network. “In the future I’d like to have service level agreements (SLAs) with these companies and agree on certain key performance indicators (KPIs). After all we must surely collaborate to give the best service to our mutual customers. When we find a problem then we could call them, or they us, and say there is an issue.” Perhaps surprisingly, this sort of cooperation is rare between network service providers and large software developers such as Google. “But why not start now?” Thurand says. Telefónica Deutschland is the first group company to roll out this software. By correlating customer behaviour, customer complaints and customer churn it can help identify regional anomalies like poor data throughput, cut the numbers switching away and encouraging more to switch to Telefónica. “But we don’t just want them to stay,” says Thurand, “we want to get new customers on board and let them
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see the value we can give to them. It started with my organisation at network operations but we are going to involve customer service, marketing, communications, and other departments. We want to roll it out into different areas of the company so we can all use this information we are now getting about our customer’s real-world experience.” It’s been a busy year for Marcus Thurand and his team, who have had to expand their centre of attention from the system to its users. “We are investing a lot in the change management and training so employees have a better understanding of their future role,” he continues. “It has also been a challenge to set up the software, which for every single interaction on the network has to analyse and put an evaluation marker on it – assessing it, noting any problems and their severity and where they originate.” Customers will quickly see the benefits in the form of fast responses to problems, even ones they may not
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Customer Experience Assurance Empirix is the recognized leader in delivering solutions to optimize customer experiences. Using technologies for monitoring and analytics, Empirix empowers organizations to overcome challenges and promote informed decision making. We help clients around the world redefine their mobile business by accelerating new business models, improving customer loyalty, reducing operational costs, increasing revenues, and providing a holistic view of subscribers and devices.
Tel: +1 978 313 7008 | sales@empirix.com | www.emprix.com
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have been aware of. In a business with so many employees it can be harder to spot problems. The SLAs Telefónica has with customers may be comfortably achieved, yet small groups, senior executives or frequently travelling salespeople for example, may still have problems. “With the new tools, we can quickly break down the macro information and see where problems lurk. That gives us the opportunity to revisit the SLAs and provide these customers with a better level of service.” Thurand remains confident that the system will yield benefits in customer satisfaction, retention and acquisition as well as fitting Telefónica’s network for the exponential data growth that will come when everyone’s refrigerator is jostling for bandwidth.
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Telefonica Deutschland Holding AG Georg-Brauchle-Ring 23-25 Munich, Bayern GERMANY, 80992 München T 498924420